The following description includes information that may be useful in understanding the present invention. It is not an admission that any of the information provided herein is prior art or relevant to the presently claimed invention, or that any publication specifically or implicitly referenced is prior art.
Targeted advertising, a type of advertising wherein advertisements are placed to reach certain groups of consumers based on demographics, behavioral variables and some other traits, has existed in limited forms for several years. Unfortunately, targeted advertising has been controversial due to privacy concerns, and the effectiveness of targeted advertising is questionable due to changes in, and decreasing predictability of, societal behavior.
One field in which long term changes in behavior do not have a great impact relates to understanding a person's current sentiments based on image data or other digital data. Examples of efforts in this field include Japanese patent publication no. 2001/087559 to Murata relating to determining a mental state from an image of a user, and U.S. Pat. No. 8,462,996 to Moon et al. relating to methods of determining a person's emotional response to a visual stimulus based on the person's facial expression.
These and all other publications identified herein are incorporated by reference to the same extent as if each individual publication or patent application were specifically and individually indicated to be incorporated by reference. Where a definition or use of a term in an incorporated reference is inconsistent or contrary to the definition of that term provided herein, the definition of that term provided herein applies and the definition of that term in the reference does not apply.
Unfortunately, previous efforts have apparently failed to appreciate that an understanding of a person's sentiments could be used to customize commercial offerings and facilitate transactions.
Thus, there is still a need for improved targeted transaction facilitating systems and methods.